The sequence played out and then the base returned to silence. Ethan looked at the artifact but it remained silent and still. Amy frowned at it and then stared up at the camera.
‘I don’t get it.’
Ethan shrugged, ‘So, maybe it is just a registration plate after all?’
Saunders’ voice attracted their attention away from the screen. ‘We’ve got company.’
Lieutenant Riggs cursed under his breath as he grabbed his rifle. ‘Damn it, this was a waste of time.’
Ethan accompanied him over to the shattered windows and looked down to see Veer’s men fanning out toward the base.
‘They’re going for it,’ Saunders said. ‘They’re attempting a full-frontal assault.’
‘Their funeral,’ Riggs growled. ‘Let ‘em in close and then we’ll take them to pieces.’
‘Roger that.’
Riggs looked across at Ethan. ‘Time to end the games out back. If we can’t open that thing up, then neither will they. Be ready to dump it back into the ocean if the base is breached.’
Ethan nodded as he drew his pistol and checked the mechanism. He hurried across to the monitor and spoke quickly.
‘Amy, we’re under attack. Get out of there, right now.’
They were out of time.
‘It’s over,’ Chandler said. ‘We just don’t have the time to finish this.’
Amy held her hands to her head as she stared at the artifact.
‘It should open!’ she insisted. ‘We deciphered the signal!’
‘We deciphered something,’ Chandler corrected her. ‘We need to get out of here before Veer’s men kill us all!’
Amy struggled to think clearly as Chandler made for the tent exit. She saw him move out of the main tent, seal it behind him, and move into the entry corridor where he could then exit the entire tent out onto the dock. Amy was about to follow him, hoping that she could return to the work before Riggs and his team sent Die Glocke to the bottom of the ocean, when she saw the writing on the transparent plastic before her.
DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT FIRST SEALING MAIN ENTRANCE
The words were written in reverse on the plastic in bright red letters and suddenly she realized her error.
‘Left to right,’ she gasped.
‘What?’ Chandler asked her from outside.
‘We assumed that they read from left to right,’ she said again, ‘but even here on Earth both Islamic and Japanese script run in the opposite direction. What if we played the sequence back to front?’
‘There isn’t time, Amy! We have to go!’
Amy ignored him as she whirled to her computer and tapped a few keys. The program flipped the sequence and she hit the play key without hesitation.
The melody played once more, the somber whoops and calls echoing around the chamber with eerily intelligent rhythm that seemed to resonate with some deeply buried, primal memory in her mind as she stood rooted to the spot as the sequence played out.
The sounds faded away and for a long moment Amy stood in silence and stared at Die Glocke, but again nothing happened.
‘It didn’t work, Amy,’ Chandler cried. ‘Get out of there!’
Amy turned to leave, but then she heard it. A hiss of escaping vapor filled the tent as she turned back and saw a thin gap appear as if by magic around the tip of Die Glocke, as slowly the top of the device opened.
‘It’s working!’ she yelped in delight and edged her way closer to the device.
‘Stay back,’ Chandler urged her. ‘We don’t know what’s in there!’
Amy did not hear him as she moved alongside Die Glocke and stepped up onto a tool box in order to peer inside the device. She reached out for a flashlight and switched it on, then aimed the beam down into the interior.
Her heart sank as she sighed.
‘It’s empty,’ she said.
Chandler peered in through the plastic wall of the tent. ‘It’s what?’
‘It’s empty,’ she said. ‘I can’t see anything inside it except two cylinders, and they’re hollow. How can this thing be empty?!’
The scientist stared at the device for a long moment and then his face fell in horror and he cried out a warning.
‘Amy, get away from it!’
Amy tried to step back, and then everything fell silent and black.
XLIV
‘What the hell happened?’
Ethan stood with Hannah beside the dock and stared at Amy as she lay unconscious inside the tent, Chandler scrambling into his bio-hazard suit and hurrying inside as he spoke.
‘She managed to open Black Knight, and that thing shot out of it and hit her in the face.’
Ethan looked down at Amy and saw what looked like a gold disc of some kind on the dock alongside her. Chandler approached it cautiously and knelt down alongside it.
‘What is it?’ Hannah asked.
Chandler whistled softly as he examined the disc.
‘It’s gold,’ he said, ‘and it’s inscribed with schematics of some kind.’
‘A gift?’ Ethan asked furtively.
‘No,’ Chandler replied, ‘gold is valuable on Earth because it is a rare metal, but that may not be the case on other planets. It’s been used because gold is extremely resistant to decay, so anything transcribed upon it and suitably protected will last for millennia. NASA did something similar with an engraved gold disc attached to the side of Voyager 1, the most distant man-made satellite in history — it’s already left our Solar System. This disc likely explains what Black Knight is for or who made it. It’s a communication, literally, from another species.’
Ethan clenched his fists. ‘Good, then we got what we were looking for. Now all we have to do is get it out of here.’
Chandler did not share Ethan’s enthusiasm, however, and looked up at Black Knight. ‘What bothers me is why this contraption should be used to contain such a small message,’ he said finally.
‘Let’s not worry about that,’ Hannah urged. ‘At least not right now. We need to leave.’
At that moment, Sully appeared at the dock.
‘They’re here!’ he called. ‘We’ve got contact with the submarine!’
Ethan whirled and with Hannah followed Sully at a run back up to the command center, where Riggs was manipulating the team’s radio. Ethan saw Lieutenant Riggs’ signals beacon flicker briefly.
‘Tell me you’re not mistaken,’ he gasped in relief.
Riggs checked the frequencies. The radio beeped again as it connected with the US Navy submarine lurking somewhere below them in the deep.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Saunders uttered from his position, ‘better late than never.’
‘The channel must be open right to the coast,’ Hannah said as she looked at Ethan. ‘They made it through.’
Ethan checked the magazine of his pistol as he replied above the sound of sporadic gunfire and the rumbling of the cavern around them.
‘It’s not going to be open for long if this cavern collapses and we don’t have any way of getting past Veer’s men and out to the pens.’
Riggs nodded.
‘They’re not going to surface while they’re under fire and risk damaging the submarine.’
Ethan peered around the edge of the corridor and then looked at Riggs.
‘I can hold them off here while the rest of you get aboard,’ he suggested. ‘Amy’s the priority now along with that disc, we need her out of here and contained.’
‘She’s not safe,’ Riggs insisted. ‘She’s been exposed to whatever’s inside that thing. I’d rather see her buried here than take her with us, so the disc is the only thing that’s coming along.’
‘She’s a human being,’ Hannah snapped at Riggs. ‘She could be cured. She’s the only way we can learn a cure!’